Sunday, June 22, 2014

I’ve found that serendipity is often part
of a writer’s life, whether it’s a chance meeting with someone who can provide
that bit of information you’ve been seeking for a novel, or an introduction to
someone who happens to be a great editor or jacket designer. This month, I had
a number of conversations with writers, discussing their work, or their
publishing and bookselling experiences. Each conversation gave me food for
thought. Ideas for increasing my output and “discoverability” bounced around my
brain, then faded away, and sometimes returned in snippets. But those ideas all
gelled this weekend when I came across one of Dean Wesley Smith’s most recent
blogs.

He’s been writing a series that he calls
Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. This week’s topic was on
the concept of falling behind, or missing one’s chance. The point that really
struck me was to take a look at where I am now as a writer and ask myself if I
still want to be in this same place five years from now. Smith stressed the
importance of forming a business plan, and of achieving realistic goals that
don’t set one up for failure. And so came my answer: create a business plan or,
in my case, revise the plan I’ve been working on.

For many years, the plan was simply to
learn how to write and revise a novel that would be publication ready. After
that goal was finally accomplished, the second plan was to find a publisher
while working on more short stories and novels. It was daunting,
but I eventually achieved this goal. Since 2011, I’ve been publishing a book a
year, something I could only dream about five years ago. But over the past three years, I’ve realized that
there’s another important step to take. I’d spent so much time revising my work
that I didn’t realize I needed to revise my plan as well.

Thanks to those insightful conversations with others, I’ve come up with some ideas about how to
make it happen. As mentioned above, the gist of it is about increasing my discoverability locally and on the Net.
This does not mean joining more social media sites, but working smarter,
particularly on short stories and novellas featuring novel characters I’ve
already created. Ideas have already begun to flow. I’m jotting down notes and working
on freeing up more time for writing. This is turning into an exciting year of
possibilities.